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For the second installment of our series on UpBuild’s company values, let’s talk about Betterment. From our Values page:

“‘Will this make someone’s day better?’ We use this question to make decisions on a daily basis. Will this strategy or recommendation I’m working make a client’s day better? Will getting this website to show up well in Google make a searcher’s day better? Will testing this CTA placement make a website user’s day better? Will giving a team member feedback in this way make their day better? If the answer is no, we have to ask if there’s a better way. Sometimes there’s not, but usually, there is.”

Making the World a Better Place

When you’re a marketer who’s also an idealist, it can be easy to feel disheartened by the very idea of marketing sometimes. After all, the cynical side of us says, isn’t marketing just figuring out how to manipulate people into buying something?

The other side of that coin, though, is that marketing can just as easily be about helping people find the things that they want and need, in ways that feel easy, pleasant, and even delightful. I’ve long said that one of the best things about search engine marketing is that unlike some more broadcast-focused mediums, SEO is all about helping people find things they’re already looking for – it’s selling people things they already want. [Read more…] about Values Spotlight: Betterment

This blog post is going to provide you with step-by-step instructions on how to run detailed page-level Lighthouse reports on multiple pages at once (even an entire site).

First of all, what is Lighthouse?

Developed by Google, Lighthouse is an open-source, automated tool for improving the performance, quality, and correctness of web applications.

When auditing a page, Lighthouse runs a barrage of tests against a page and then generates a report on how well the page did. From there you can use the failing tests as indicators on areas to improve.

I should note here that Lighthouse Reports are not solely referencing page load time. In fact, there are a lot of page speed metrics beyond what the end user experiences and those metrics are very important to Google. These reports are very detailed, and when Google releases a tool like this it helps us see through Google’s lens and help us understand the metrics that they consider important.

There’s been a lot of conversation over the past few years about the four-day work week, and it’s not lacking controversy. A recent survey by The Workforce Institute revealed that while 72% of employees are in favor of a four-day work week, 37% also said they can’t finish their tasks even when they have a five-day work week. Treehouse, a technical education platform, received a ton of coverage in 2015 when they implemented a 32-hour work week; however, they rolled the program back one year later, citing a sharp decline in work ethic.

This begs the question: is a four-day work week realistic, especially in an industry where client needs often require tight turnaround times and undelayed communication?

How to Tailor Google Analytics Dashboards to Your Business Type

Creating dashboards in Google Analytics is a highly effective way to visualize and analyze your business’s performance online. Google Analytics dashboards give you a multi-dimensional view of your website’s strengths and weaknesses, so you can work on improving the areas that need it.

Dashboards are made up of up to twelve widgets that combine dimensions such as user demographic information, event actions, date, and location, with metrics that help you visualize trends and measure your website’s success in many different ways. While the Google team has made creating a dashboard a relatively simple and user-friendly experience, it takes some experience and skill to put together a dashboard that will truly help you improve business through your website.[Read more…] about How to Tailor Google Analytics Dashboards to Your Business Type

“UpBuild exists so driven and passionate technical marketers can do their best work, in their ideal environment, for clients whom they’re excited to work for.”

This post is going to focus on the ‘ideal environment’ part, namely the physical element of where we do our best work. UpBuild is a 100% distributed company with team members located all across the U.S. Despite and as a result of these differences in location, we all have the shared experience of working remotely. We talk about it a lot, swapping pro-tips, commiserating on down Wi-Fi, and sharing links to home office gear.

What do we mean when we say “ideal environment”? I’ll let the UpBuild Team tell you where we each do our best work.